LingoDrop
Italian · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "come" in Italian?
KOH-meh, with a closed "oh" and a fully pronounced final e — this is not the English word "come," even though it's spelled exactly the same. In IPA: /ˈko.me/.
Two syllables, co and me, both said clearly — the final e is a full, separate beat, never dropped the way English silent e's usually are.
Listen: come
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Sound it out
This word's biggest obstacle isn't the spelling rules, it's that English already has a word spelled exactly "come" — and that visual match pulls hard toward the wrong pronunciation entirely.
Hear it in a sentence
Come stai oggi?
How are you today?
Listen: Come stai oggi?
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"Come stai oggi?" is one of the most common greeting formulas in Italian, pairing "come" (how) with "stai," the informal "tu" form of "stare" (to be, in the sense of one's state or condition). The formal equivalent swaps in "Lei": "Come sta oggi?"
"Come" also means "like" or "as" in comparisons ("veloce come il vento," fast as the wind), so its meaning shifts between "how" and "like/as" depending entirely on the sentence around it — the word itself never changes form.
Where English speakers slip
The single biggest mistake, by a wide margin, is pronouncing this word the way an English speaker would read the identically spelled English word "come" — /kʌm/, with a silent e and a completely different vowel. Italian "come" shares nothing with its English look-alike beyond the letters.
The second habit is dropping the final e the way English orthography trains readers to do (compare English "come" vs. "comer," where e is famously silent). In Italian, almost every written vowel is pronounced, and the final e of "come" is a full, audible syllable.